I. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a portable electronic device, and a method for issuing the device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a device and method for achieving high security during application operation and high efficiency while being issued.
II. Background and Material Information
A portable electronic device such as an IC card prevents an unauthorized third person from reading and rewriting data stored in an internal memory, writing new data into the internal memory by a security function realized by, such as, a personal identification number (PIN) code, and encoding data to be transmitted to or from a card reader/writer.
An IC card needs to be written with specific data necessary for operation of each application. For example, an IC card may require entry of an owner's PIN code and cryptographic key for an application so that the IC card can become usable for the application. This process of writing the specific data into the IC card is called “issuance.” An issuer usually issues a large number of IC cards with specific data at a time. Each issued IC card requires satisfaction of the security function except for the owner's PIN code. Therefore, because a preparatory process such as a data encoding process must occur before the issuing process, this preparatory process makes issuing the card inefficient.
Therefore, demanded is a mechanism in which (1) an unissued IC card can be written with the specific data without satisfying with the security function and (2) the security function becomes valid after the issuance and each IC card requires satisfaction of the security function in case of data writing or data rewriting. That is, an IC card with which achieves high security during application operation and high efficiency during issuance is demanded.